Weekend Box Office: It Really Was a ‘Happy Death Day’

Getting an early jump on the Halloween season, Happy Death Dayopened to very healthy numbers over the weekend. The thriller, a spooky riff on the Groundhog Day concept (a girl lives the same day, the day she is killed, over and over, until she can solve her own murder), grossed an estimated $26.5 million, and earned a B score from CinemaScore. It looks like another solid horror hit for Blumhouse, the studio that in recent months also scored with Split and Get Out. That place ain’t dying anytime soon.

Here’s the full box office chart:

Film

Weekend

Per Screen

1

Happy Death Day

$26,500,000

$8,415

$26,500,000

2

Blade Runner 2049

$15,100,000 (-53%)

$3,721

$60,578,387

3

The Foreigner

$12,840,000

$5,105

$12,840,000

4

It

$6,050,000 (-39%)

$1,905

$314,929,521

5

The Mountain Between Us

$5,650,000 (-46%)

$1,734

$20,502,922

6

American Made

$5,423,000 (-35%)

$1,750

$40,152,865

7

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

$5,315,000 (-38%)

$1,782

$89,652,040

8

The LEGO Ninjago Movie

$4,315,000 (-38%)

$1,413

$51,577,689

9

My Little Pony: The Movie

$4,000,000 (-55%)

$1,582

$15,513,434

10

Victoria and Abdul

$3,115,000 (-25%)

$3,461

$11,341,944

Happy Death Day knocked Blade Runner 2049 out of the top spot on the chart after just one weekend. The sci-fi sequel dropped almost 54 percent and earned only $15.1 million. After 10 days in theaters, its domestic total is $60.5 million; it’s earned an additional $98 million overseas for a worldwide total of $158.5 million. They’re respectable numbers, but not exactly blockbuster ones. If you’re hoping for a third Blade Runner, you might not see it until 2042, if ever.

The other wide release of the weekend wasThe Foreigner, a new thriller starring Jackie Chan as a man seeking revenge after the death of his daughter, leading him to cross paths with a cunning Irish politician, played by Pierce Brosnan. The film grossed $12.8 million in its debut in theaters; its A- from CinemaScore bodes well for at least decent word-of-mouth among action fans looking for something to see this fall. The film has already made over $100 million worldwide against a budget of just $35 million.

The blockbuster of the early fall, It, made another $6 million, good for fourth place over the weekend, and a whopping $314 million in U.S. theaters so far. It’s (heh, It’s) the fifth biggest movie of the year, with only about $20 million fewer tickets sold than Spider-Man: Homecoming. In fifth place for the weekend was The Mountain Between Us, the survival drama starring Idris Elba and Kate Winslet. Its $5.6 million brings two-weekend total is $20.5 million.

In limited release, the historical biopic Marshall, starring Chadwick Boseman as Thurgood Marshall, grossed $3 million in about 800 theaters. On over 1200 screens, the biopic Professor Marston and the Wonder Woman earned just $737,000; according to Box Office Mojo this is the 18th worst debut ever for a film opening on over 1,000 screens, a particularly disappointing result given the tie-in with Wonder Woman, one of the biggest movies of the year. The best per-screen average of the weekend belonged to Human Flow, a documentary by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. It made an average of $15,667 in three theaters around the country.